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The Crucible 

A Southerner's 
Impression of Hampton 



" The attempt to cast all mind* in 
one mould i« utelest/' — Armstrong 



The Crucible 

A Southerner's Impression of Hampton 
J. W, CHURCH 



The Press of 

The Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute 

Hampton, Virginia 

1910 



BOARD OF TRUSTEES q^ r^<V 



V^^,x^^ 



Robert C. Ogden, President, New York V \X 

Alexander McKenzie, Vice President, Cambrid|,e, Mass. 

HoLLis B. Frissell, Secretary, Hampton, Va. 

George Foster Peabody, New York 

Francis G, Peabody, Cambridge, Mass. 

Charles E. Bigelow, New York 

Arthur Curtiss James, New York 

William Jay Schieffelin, New York 

LuNSFORD L, Lewis, Richmond, Va. 

James W, CcJoper, Hartford, Conn. 

William W. Frazier, Philadelphia 

Frank W. Darling, Hampton, Va. 

William Howard Taft, Washington, D. C. 

Clarence H. Kelsey, New York 

FORM OF BEQUEST 

I give and devise to the trustees of The Hampton 
Normal and Agricultural Institute, Hampton, Virginia, 
the sum of dollars, payable .... 



Gift 

AUG 5 1910 







Hampton Institute Water Front 



The Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute 

MOLLIS B. FRISSELL FRAN K K. ROGERS H ERBERT B. TU RN ER 

PRINCIPAL TREASURER CHAPLAIN 



Founded by Samuel Chapman Armstrong in 1868 for the 
practical education of Negro and Indian youth. 

To make earnest, useful, Christian citizens, who will lead 
and teach their people, is its object. 

The needs of the school are many, and its support depends 
almost entirely upon private contributions. 

Any amount you may desire to contribute, no matter how 
small, will be gratefully received. 

In providing a Hampton scholarship for some deserving 
Negro boy or girl, you will give your donation a human, 
personal element, as a record is kept for the donor of the 
student who receives the scholarship. 

Thirty dollars will provide an industrial scholarship for 
one year. 

Seventy dollars will provide an academic scholarship for 
one year. 

A permanent industrial scholarship can be endowed for 
eight hundred dollars and a permanent academic scholar- 
ship for two thousand dollars. 

All contributions may be sent to the Treasurer, F. K. Rogers, 
Hampton, Va., by whom they will be acknowledged. 




The Hampton Battalion 



The Crucible 



A Southerner's Impression of Hampton 



AMPTON Normal and Agricultural Institute! 
The name doesn't suggest anything of particu- 
lar interest, does it ? Rather prosaic than other- 
wise, and when you couple the uninteresting 
title with the fact that it is an industrial school for Negroes 
and Indians, it seems hardly worth while to read about it. 
Probably that is why, to the great majority of citizens of the 
United States, the name " Hampton " means little or nothing. 




Right there is where they make the greatest mistake of their 
lives. Of all the places of absorbing interest in the country, 
Hampton Institute can easily claim the lead, and make good 
that claim, whether it be from an industrial, sociological, phil- 
anthropic, or any other basis. 

The institute is a crucible — a veritable crucible in which 
for nearly half a century a modern miracle has taken place. 
From out the South, where Negro life has been an existence of 
mental and moral darkness, steeped in ignorance, idleness, and 
superstition, a steady, ceaseless current has flowed into this 
crucible, there to be transformed by the wonder-touch, and in 
turn poured forth, a living stream of moral integrity, mental 
strength, and industrial ability. 

Quietly has this miracle been wrought — with infinite 
patience and surpassing skill, with kindly firmness, and an 
unswerving, steadfast endeavor. 

The inclination to deal in superlatives where Hampton 
is the theme is inevitable. The saving grace lies in the fact 
that when you attempt to describe Hampton, only superlatives 
can deal fairly with the coldest of facts. 

It is not a school. It is an industrial village — a village 
nestled on the shore of Hampton Roads, with the clear water 
of Chesapeake Bay lapping its green lawns where they run to 
the water's edge. Beneath the shade of hundreds of magnif- 
icent trees, far reaches of velvet greensward stretch in every 
direction, laced here and there with level, spotless paths. In 
this village there are more than a hundred buildings, many of 




Winona, or Elder Sister, Lodge 



them are embowered in Ihousands of roses, or half hidden 
beneath the clinging vines that clamber in luxuriant profusion 
to the very roofs. 

The beauty of the village does not end with its phys- 
ical charm. There is something more than that. In many 
other places there are lawns as beautiful, trees as stately, and 
flowers in the same luxuriant profusion, although the com- 
bination of all is rare. But here there is a something subtle 
and, at first, indefinable in the air of the place. It is the 
atmosphere of content, engendered by half a century of earn- 
est and contented life within the grounds of Hampton. It is 
not imagination. It is real, tangible, and one of the greatest 
assets of the institute in fulfilling its great mission. 

It would take volumes to tell how Hampton has been 
brought to its present state, and the results it has obtained, 
but in order that the present may be understood, a brief word 
of the past is necessary. 

The institute was created in 1868 by General Samuel C. 
Armstrong, who was then stationed at Hampton. He had 
been sent there by the United States Government as a mediator 
between the whites and blacks, in those dark, perplexing days 
following the close of the Civil War. 

He found hundreds of Negroes, homeless, hungry, and 
unskilled in any manual art, eking out a miserable existence 
and daily falling lower and lower in the social scale. Free- 
dom had merely turned them loose under new conditions to 
which they were in nowise able to rise. The plantations on 
which they had worked as slaves were in ruins, and they were 
mentally and physically unfit to secure or retain any position 



requiring the least modicum of manual skill or intelligence. 
To meet this situation, and avert the tragedy of a race that 
must live and yet could not earn its bread, was the tremendous 
task General Armstrong set for himself. With the aid of the 
American Missionary Association, he established a small 
industrial school on the site of the present institute, with two 
assistants and fifteen pupils. No thought of social equality or 
the higher education befogged his mind. The only end sought 




Correlation of Arithmetic and Bricklaying 

was to teach the Negro how to work, that he might earn his 
living honestly, and adjust himself to the new conditions of 
life thrust upon him. 

For twenty-five years General Armstrong labored at his 
task, and under his firm hand and steadfast purpose the Hamp- 
ton Institute lived and thrived. Then Death called him from 
his work, and Dr. H. B. Frissell, for many years his assistant 
stepped into the breach and the work went on. 



So much for the past, of which might be written many 
volumes replete with stories of heart-bi'eaking struggles, almost 
divine patience, and heroic self-sacrifice. 

To-day there are fourteen hundred students, about equally 
divided as to sex, working and studying under a corps of one 
hundred and twenty-five teachers and instructors. The records 
show that over seventy-five hundred students have gone from 
Hampton, ably equipped to earn an honest living, rehabilitate 
the barren farms, and stimulate by their work and example a 
desire for good citizenship and better physical conditions 
among their race. 

Hampton does nothing by halves. When the young Ne- 
groes enter the school, it is with the knowledge that for four 
years unceasing toil lies before them — toil that is lightened by 
every incentive to interest them in their work that the human 
mind can devise, and by a mode of life that impresses 
them with the dignity of labor and the value of clean living, 
but nevertheless unceasing toil. Idleness was the Negro's 
heritage, ignorance his portion in the world's scheme, and to 
eradicate these two evils from his nature has been Hampton's 
greatest endeavor — and success has crowned the effort. 

The dormitories are spotless — the floor of each room is 
scrubbed by its inmate until the pine fairly glistens — the lock- 
ers and bedding are daily inspected by the janitor in charge — 
the discipline is patterned after West Point and is rigidly 
adhered to. 

At five-thirty in the morning the students rise. At six 
they breakfast. The morning is spent in workshop and class- 
room until noon. Then the chimes over Memorial Church 



ring out, and in ten minutes the boys have cast aside their 
working clothes, donned their uniforms, and the battalion is 
formed on the parade ground for inspection by the Comman- 
dant. The band plays, and in perfect formation the companies 
march toward Virginia Hall, where their meals are served. 
On the broad green campus before the vine-clad hall, the bat- 
talion forms in two long files, facing each other, about thirty 
feet apart. The students uncover, and between the files march 




Students at Work in the Creamery 

the standard-bearers carrying the Stars and Stripes and the 
blue-and-white flag of Hampton Institute. The files close, 
and in perfect order the entire student body marches into one 
great dining hall. A bell sounds. A moment of silence, and 
then, softly, but with increasing volume, a thousand voices 
sing in harmony the Hampton grace: 



" Thou art great and Thou art good, 
And we thank Thee for this food ; 
By Thy hand must we be fed, 
Give us. Lord our daily bread. Amen." 

At one o'clock they are back in the classrooms, the work- 
shops, the stables, or on the farm, and here, it may be said in 
passing, is where Hampton is doing its greatest work at pres- 
ent. "Back to the farm" is where Hampton believes the Negro 
will find peace and congenial labor. No agricultural school 
in America is better equipped for this purpose, and when a 
graduate of the agricultural class leaves, he is amply able, as 
scores of instances have shown, to make a good living on ground 
where before, as one graduate had aptly put it, he "couldn't 
even raise a disturbance." 

The evening meal is at six o'clock. Then come prayers 
in Cleveland Hall Chapel, and classes from seven to nine for 
students who have been at work all day at their trades. Then 
taps sounds and the day is over. 

There is recreation and exercise in plenty interspersed 
with the daily labor. Baseball, tennis, rowing, and every 
other outdoor sport that tends to strengthen muscles and 
lungs, and quicken the brain and eye, are given the students. 
But sports and recreation are not allowed to interfere with 
the studies or industrial training for which the students come. 
That the problem of healthy, happy, earnest life has been 
solved is amply borne out by the school records, where it is 
shown that in ten years only fourteen deaths have occurred 
among the students. Wherever they are working or playing, 
laughter and songs are in the air, and a surly word or frown- 
ing brow is rarely seen. 




Training of Negro Blacksmiths 




Negro Boys Remodeling the Trade School 



The academic work is almost entirely correlated with 
industrial training. No language other than English is taught, 
nor any sciences or isms that cannot be applied to their daily 
working lives. The Hampton idea is to turn out farmers, 
skilled workers in the trades, teachers equipped to handle 
the problem of carrying on the elemental education of their 
race, and to imbue every graduate with the fixed idea of aid- 
ing to the utmost of his or her ability in raising the moral and 
industrial standard of the race. That this plan does produce 
leaders is proved by the scores of graduates whose names have 
become a power for good among the Negroes, from the now 
famous Booker Washington, who graduated from Hampton in 
1875, down to many whose work is known only to the com- 
munity in which they live, where they have instilled industry, 
moral and physical cleanliness, and a desire for more useful 
lives among their fellows. 

Hampton is no place for the incorrigible Negro. Its scholar- 
ships are intended for the Negro youth and girl who have in 
them the mental, moral, and physical material to utilize their 
training for the benefit of their race. In brief, it is the aim 
of Hampton to create leaders who, in turn, shall take up the 
extension work in degree great or small, according to ability 
and environment. 

This then, is the work of Hampton Institute. It is not a 
state or government institution, but a private corporation, 
existing from year to year by endowments and subscriptions 
from individuals whose sympathy with the work is thus 
expressed, and who count themselves honored in sharing in a 
work so beneficent in its influence, so wide reaching in its 
practical good, and so high in its aim and method. 






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